Slum Beautiful

People are right to be itchy about how outsiders portray them. Rebuke will always go down better if it’s delivered by someone who cares about the recipient. If we’re not convinced that the outsider cares about us, we’re unlikely to listen to them, no matter how reasonable their feedback. As an Israeli, I know this all too well. We take criticism like water off a duck’s back; insecure in our standing in the world, we are dismissive of those who question our behaviour, whether friend or foe.

What about India? The world has only begun to give her the attention she deserves since the economic liberalization of the 1990s. Increased interest inevitably leads to increased sensitivity, of which the reaction to Slumdog Millionaire is a case in point. Directed by Danny Boyle, this magnificent homage to the ethos (if not the substance) of Bollywood is obviously an “outsider’s” production. As a result, it has come under attack. 

There are two fronts to this assault: Boyle is either too brutal or too sentimental. The byword for the brutality is Dickensian, a lazy piece of shorthand which increasingly makes Kafkaesque look positively underused. Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, perhaps smarting from having his right hand depicted in the movie (and to sign the autograph of a shit-drenched street-urchin, noch), gets all defensive: “If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as Third World dirty belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.” This kind of logic is all too familiar: why complain about our depravations when you’ve got your own? Did he not see Trainspotting?

Boyle isn’t trying to make a political point about India’s problems; he’s just trying to do them cinematic justice. Unfortunately, though, there’s no pleasing some people. For if he’s not dragging India’s image through the grime of the Dharavi slums, he’s sentimentalizing its poverty. This is Gautaman Bhaskara’s complaint: “Poverty is celebrated: destitution, squalor, beggar mafia and prostitution stare at us from the frames – magnified to distortion, glorified silly and used as tools of titillation to please the smug white world.” Mr Bhaskara has read a bit too much Edward Said. It’s true that the film attempts to show joy amidst the poverty, the colour and the aspiration, the dignity despite it all. Are social ills only to be represented with handheld cameras on grey, rainy days? Does anyone really think that an audience would leave Slumdog Millionaire thinking that Indian poverty was anything other than a curse to be eradicated? Should Boyle make a movie set only in the 6-Star hotels of Gurgaon?

What about sentimentality? This kind of lazy accusation makes the Indian poor untouchable in more ways than one, as somehow incapable of being anything other than hapless victims, their story always forced on them, never self-made. It’s true that the film’s rags-to-riches trajectory recalls the Republic ideals of something like Forrest Gump, and the rampant materialism of Indian society (from top to bottom) is rarely questioned, at least not seriously. I think, though, that this needs to be understood as Boyle’s homage to the genre. The film is structured like a masala epic, with gangsters, dances, quiz-shows, and more. The innovation, if that is not over-stating the case, is to depict it all without shirking from the reality of contemporary Indian society, a slice of realist escapism reminiscent of Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance.  

I wonder if the good people of Edinburgh hurled the same abuse at Boyle for Trainspotting. Perhaps. The point is that he isn’t pretending to be an insider. He had never visited the country before shooting the film, and has tried at every stage to be sensitive to the material he’s portraying. There are problems, particularly in the absurd detour to Agra. Can the Taj really be seen from the railway tracks? Are tourists really that dumb? But the car-jacking scene rings true. Dour observers have argued that the exchange regarding the “real India/real America” (police brutality swapped for a hundred dollar bill) is delivered without irony, but this isn’t the case. It’s a deliberate piece of pastiche, a laugh gained at our (the western audience’s) expense.

Remember, one third of the film’s dialogue is in Hindi. The hero and victim is a Muslim, a fact that has gone curiously under-reported, particularly in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks. These are not the usual features of an Oscar-nominated blockbuster. The cinematography, always breathtaking, is a non-stop advertisement for the country, even if it does – during the fights – get a bit too much like 28 Days Later (Zombies marching through the slums of Mumbai – now there’s a thought!). The quiz-show framing device also works well, a kind of twenty-first century Arabian Nights, allowing for a surprising number of twists and turns, never predictable. There’s even room for a touch of Scarface at the end.

Slumdog Millionaire does not pretend to be a piece of gritty realism, nor is it an overtly political work. The outrage in some quarters to its release is unnecessary. Like DJ Premier sampling the jazz greats, it’s made me want to go back and give pure Bollywood cinema another chance. In a year in which an Indian author won the Booker prize with another rag-to-riches story, it’s yet another reminder of just how potent Indian soft power is, even if the subject matter is shocking. Slumdog Millionaire is cinema at its most respectful, providing hope that art may yet improve the conversation between cultures. Go see it…